


Practice Makes

by Carrogath



Series: In Sickness and in Health [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Porn With Plot, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 06:49:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21405958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrogath/pseuds/Carrogath
Summary: Mercedes might be better at this than she thinks.
Relationships: Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Mercedes von Martritz
Series: In Sickness and in Health [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1486901
Comments: 4
Kudos: 107





	Practice Makes

**Author's Note:**

> it's past 1 AM but who needs sleep am I right
> 
> Part of a series, but can be read as standalone, because, well... it's just smut. Very mild descriptions of gore but nothing objectionable, otherwise.

Ingrid knows her body well by now, Mercedes believes.

She knows how it bends and how it breaks, when to tease and when to spoil, knows how to coil her up tight, taut as stretched leather, until she’s all but begging for relief. She knows her, intimately, every callus and every blemish, every nick and scar. They’ve been married half a year, but they’ve known each other far longer than that. She knows that Mercedes is sensitive along her inner thigh, at the dip of her spine and the back of her neck, knows that she’s never loud, even when pushed past her breaking point. Ingrid hears her less than she feels her—hot, wet bursts that drip down her hand, the staccato jerk of her hips, canting and juddering until her vision flashes white, and she gasps as if surfacing for air—and knows when to guide her down from her peaks, and when to let her crest. They’ve fallen into such familiar patterns that they’ll spend entire evenings without saying a word to one another, every form of communication replaced with learned movements in the dark. Mercedes has never wanted anyone else to touch her like this, but with Ingrid, it’s as natural as breathing.

So Ingrid knows right away when something has gone wrong. She slips her fingers out of her and squeezes her shoulder with her clean hand, searching her face for signs of what might have happened tonight.

Mercedes is incomprehensible. She’s shaking, crying, babbling apologies—she doesn’t even know _why_—but when Ingrid reaches over to massage her shoulder she immediately puts her hand over hers, and squeezes back. “I don’t mind if the other one is dirty,” and now she’s massaging both shoulders, and Mercedes breathes a sigh of relief. The touch is reassuring, rather than sexual, and that’s what she needs right now, she thinks.

Her eyes dart around the ceiling of their shared bedroom. Galatea is… better off than it once was; with the Empire fully in control, there was no one left to deny Ingrid her birthright, and Edelgard granted the lands to her and her immediate family before she even asked. They have no heirs, but they’ve considered adoption. They just can’t decide on how many children their household, or rather Ingrid, can handle. Mercedes wants as many children as will fit on the estate. Ingrid asked for one, at first, and then two, and the last time they discussed it she was willing to accept three. She’s nervous about being a mother, she says. She’s a warrior before she’s a woman; she’s a knight before she’s a lady. Androgyny suits her, though. Gender is restrictive, and Ingrid has always been something of a rebellious spirit.

“Are you feeling better?” Ingrid asks.

“Yes,” she responds. “Yes. Yes… It was only for a moment.” Her heartbeat has settled; she’s being honest, now. She can see how worry still creases Ingrid’s brow, and she doesn’t even bother with trying for a smile. The war may be long past them, but inside their heads, trapped within the confines of their minds, the sights and sounds and smells still rattle around, the blood and the dirt and the screams, the sweat, the viscera, the everyday horrors of Emperor Edelgard’s five-year-long campaign. Mercedes spies a scar curling around Ingrid’s sixth left rib, snaking along the serratus anterior, and her chest tightens.

She knows that one; she’s touched it before. She healed it, back when it was raw and open and bleeding, ugly and bruised around the cut. Mercedes loved her then, already. She’s loved her for so long that it’s hard to remember a time when she didn’t.

Her fingers are running along the scar before she realizes what she’s doing, and Ingrid looks down at her.

“Oh.” She withdraws her hand.

Ingrid glances at the scar. “Did you notice something about it?”

“I healed that one,” she responds immediately. “I remember… On the Tailtean Plains.”

“Oh.” Her face falls. “I… I don’t, actually.”

She smiles. “It’s all right. We were all having a rough time of it. You’re here with me now, and that’s what matters.”

Ingrid smiles back, and squeezes her hand where it lingers over the scar. “Right.” She lowers their hands, slowly, back onto Mercedes’s chest. Her eyes are narrowed, and Mercedes realizes, half-lidded with desire now that her fear has passed. She must notice Mercedes’s expression, because she says, “We don’t have to do anything else tonight.” Then she squeezes her hand again. “I’d understand perfectly if you’d rather rest.”

“I didn’t say anything about that,” says Mercedes, not because she’s feeling particularly bold, or particularly amorous, but rather for the sheer sake of being contrary.

She knows it’s petty, but that’s the point. She hates how her fears control her, at times, how her trauma resurfaces at the worst possible moments. She hates how she can be admiring Ingrid’s body, only to imagine it impaled on the end of a sword, or spear, or blade of ice a second later. She’s seen limbs ripped apart and chests torn open, has studied every bone and organ and vein and muscle; she’s a healer. She’s supposed to be prepared for the possibilities, no matter how cruel or traumatic or sickening. Everyone has painful memories that they refuse to share. Everyone knows how desperate their fellow soldiers can be. Nothing surprises her anymore—or it shouldn’t.

She wriggles her hand out of Ingrid’s grasp, and presses her finger to the scar again. The skin has long since healed. It’s not quite the same as the skin around it—will never be—but it’s there and it’s firm and it’s holding her insides in place. She runs her finger from the scar along her rib toward her back, feeling along the muscle—this, she likes, the trapezium, rock-solid to support Ingrid’s perfect posture, all the hours she spends on horseback—and then moves in reverse, to the front of her body, to the obliques. A swipe to the center of her chest down to her navel leaves Ingrid gasping, but she’s smiling now, and looks less worried. Mercedes thinks about slipping her hand lower; she knows Ingrid is wet and would take her fingers easily.

Mercedes is bad at this, she thinks, not nearly as comfortable with exploring Ingrid’s body as Ingrid is with Mercedes’s own. Ingrid is sensitive just about everywhere—her stomach and her ears in particular—and she’s always slick when they make love. She’s less reserved, too, and louder, and rarely has to ask Mercedes to stop. She’ll readily go down on her—Mercedes has to be coaxed into doing the same for Ingrid—and she’s more enthusiastic about experimenting in bed, about trying something new. They’ve never talked about Mercedes’s occasional disgust, her revulsion toward having sex. Ingrid knows about her triggers, and avoids them as best she can, but sometimes nothing at all triggers her and they’ll stop and she’ll do what she must, if she must do anything. Tonight, it was brief, and they’re luckier. Tonight, Mercedes sees not a living corpse, but Ingrid alone, loving and lecherous and wonderful. She’s calm right now, but it won’t take much more to ruin her; Mercedes knows that.

“Um…” Mercedes’s eyes flicker to Ingrid’s legs, to their respective positions on the bed. She wants her on her back. She’s surprised she wants at all. “Do you…” how to say this, “want to lie on your back?”

Ingrid’s eyes widen. She’s more than willing. “Of course! Of course.” She rolls onto her back, and Mercedes straddles her hips. Suddenly everything she thought about doing to her whisks out of her head, and she has no idea what to do at all. This should be easier, she thinks, frustratedly, but when is it ever?

She glances down. Ingrid is so wet she’s glistening, but nothing else about her posture or her expression betrays that. Ingrid lies still—she’s still worried about her, but she has every right to be. Mercedes never asks to do this, to be the one on top; she’ll attend to Ingrid’s needs one way or another, and sometimes they’ll switch positions and sometimes they won’t, but Mercedes has never wanted her like she has tonight. She wonders if Ingrid realizes she’s being a stubborn fool about it.

But no, now Ingrid is here splayed out before her, and she has to do something. Ingrid would never tell her without being asked, so she knows it’s up to her to decide what to do, and when, and how. She considers asking, “Where do you want me? How do you like it?” but it doesn’t feel right, not when Ingrid hasn’t asked those questions of her in a long time.

She’s so wet that Mercedes can smell her, but she doesn’t even look aroused. She blinks, owl-eyed and curious and composed, naked and relaxed, and Mercedes thanks Sothis and every other god there is that Ingrid is being so patient with her tonight.

Of course, Ingrid is patient with her every night they make love, but she’s usually not the one being made to wait. She has a few other scars that draw Mercedes’s attention—one that lingers dangerously at the crook of her neck and her shoulder, and another that runs a thick, jagged line across her stomach—but it bothers her that that’s all that she sees. Another, more discerning woman would notice the smooth curves of her shoulders and her hips, something about the shape of her breasts, maybe, wax poetic about the areolas of her nipples. Instead, Mercedes sees someone who would give her life for her ideals and her people over and over again, and all the times she’d nearly killed herself in her willingness to do so. There’s something romantic about that, yes, but there’s plenty more not to like.

Mercedes wets her lips. It takes a lot to hurt Ingrid, but human bodies are so fragile. She isn’t worried about hurting her, but she is worried she might be too subtle, that her touches might not be enough to elicit a reaction—and she tests her theory by running her finger down along Ingrid’s stomach again, and the muscles beneath the skin clench in response.

So, nothing wrong there, then. She leans over, carefully, to the scar at the base of her neck. When she flicks her tongue over the spot, Ingrid hums her approval. Then she adds teeth, and when she sucks, Ingrid is crooning in pleasure.

This is good. She feels better, now. Less like a failure. More like a proper wife.

Ingrid doesn’t react to having her breasts fondled—neither of them do—so she slips her hand further down and leaves furtive strokes below her waist instead. Her body begins to arch, and Mercedes can feel her own pulse begin to quicken. She presses her lips to Ingrid’s neck, to her pulse, to feel it throbbing wildly there. Her hand dips lower. Ingrid gasps. She knows that Ingrid never finishes less than twice—even when Mercedes touches her first, it’s always at the point that Ingrid is ready for her—and that Mercedes herself is far more aroused than usual, and that Ingrid never quite got her to climax.

She presses a finger into her slick, and knows at once from Ingrid’s reaction that Ingrid won’t last until then. Mercedes opens her mouth around Ingrid’s pulse, flicking her tongue around the artery, and bites.

There’s something oddly comforting about Ingrid’s first orgasm—Mercedes knows to expect another, and it never overstays its welcome—and the way she seizes on the bed when it comes; she moans freely with every successive stroke, grasping the sheets beneath them, and then her hips jerk again and there’s the second, better, _longer_, more controlled, and Mercedes can feel her muscles flex underneath her, the roll and the sway, every joint and ligament working in perfect tandem. She’s moaning before she even realizes it, and her voice alone keeps Ingrid going until they’re both spent and gasping, and Mercedes is squirming and whimpering against her, simultaneously relieved and in desperate need of relief, which, once she’s turned on her back, she receives in short order.

“No tongue?”

“No tongue.” If Ingrid goes down on her, she’ll explode.

She comes twice, three times, clawing at Ingrid’s back and thrusting against her pelvis on the third. She’s so _wet_—she never is—that every nerve in her body sings and she feels nothing but pleasure all the way through. Even when she stops, she can still feel the squeeze of her inner walls against Ingrid’s motionless fingers, and when Ingrid tries to pull out of her she begs her to stay until she finishes.

It takes a while, and when she’s done, they’re quiet.

It’s dark, and despite the usual northern cold, their bodies are hot and damp and sticky with sweat. Mercedes’s breath comes out in shudders. Ingrid is still on top of her; they’re sandwiched together on the bed, and Mercedes is burning. She could almost be feverish, if she didn’t know better. She can’t see Ingrid’s face, and isn’t quite sure what to make of it herself.

And then Ingrid moves, slowly, to nuzzle into her neck.

“_Goddess_,” she moans, and Mercedes bursts into a stupid grin and knows she’ll never have to worry about having sex ever again. “Can we do that again?” Her voice is still thick with arousal. She’s insatiable. “Can we? Goddess.”

Mercedes’s heart is still hammering in her chest. She doesn’t think she can handle another, at least for a little while. “Maybe later,” she says.

She’s happy like this, pressed up against her lover—they’re married now, Ingrid is technically her “wife”—and the ceiling is still there and the moon is still up in the sky and nothing’s crashed down to earth and they’re not all dead yet, and she’ll have to be content with that, she thinks.

Funnily enough, she is.


End file.
